Monday, January 31, 2011

BIB (Broken In Box) Gun

Here are some standard things that you need to know:1) I have bad luck2) I am hard on equipment3) Things break around me.

If a rock is falling off a cliff, it's not falling toward me. It's falling towards my car. If there is one broken toy in 1000, I get the one. If there is a way for something to break that no one has seen before... well, I'll break it in that exact way- and do it when it's 2 days out of warranty.

Let me explain further in reference to guns. I send a lot of guns back to the factory for repair. I have had break on me- or gotten them NIB, BIB. Here are the ones I can remember:Taurus PT-22: Hinge pin for the barrel broke while firing.Taurus PT92C: Constant Jamming. Sent to factory TWICE, and still jammedTaurus 617 .357Mag: Cylinder locked up while shooting.Taurus 445 .44Spl: Cyl Locked up, sent back, it came back, and Cyl locked up again(PS, at this point, I stopped buying Taurus guns)CZ-2075 RAMI: Returned to factory for FTF problems. It went back 2 more times before they just replaced the gunKahr Mk9: Recoil Spring stack came apart. They just mailed me another one 2nd day air.CZ-P-07 Duty: New in Box, mags would not drop free. CZ replaced the gun.

I'm sure there are a few others in there that I have forgotten.

All that is prologue to this fact: When my wife gave me a Charter Arms Bulldog Pug .44Spl this weekend as a gift, I was not surprised that it was broken in the box. Disappointed, yes... but not surprised. Rounds would not fit in the chambers. After some inspection with friends, it was noticed that the extractor star was installed slightly clocked out of time with the cylinder. That effectively blocked the chamber mouth.

So, fully expecting to fight about this from my prior experiences with Taurus and (unfortunately) CZ that I would NOT pay for shipping their defective product back, I was pleasantly surprised this morning. I called Charter, and Dee was very pleasant, listened to my problem, did not assume I was an idiot, and took immediate action to solve the problem.Dee emailed me a shipping label to send the gun back, told me they could have it fixed within a week, gave me clear and concise directions, and apologized for the inconvenience. This has made me very happy with them so far. I understand that a bad product can get shipped out the door, and I understand that it will PROBABLY end up going through distribution and landing on my doorstep shortly afterward. But it's how they take care of the customer after the sale that marks a company that 'gets it'.

1 comment:

Well, what a pleasant start. Let's hope that the entire deal stays on the same level. I always like seeing your issues because I never have weird stuff like that and I like to catalog it in case it does ever happen to me. Let's not even start on workboots.